Computers and their application programs are used in all aspects of business, industry and academic endeavors. In recent years, there has been a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the Internet. As a result of these changes, it seems as if virtually all aspects of human productivity in the industrialized world requires human/computer interaction. The computer industry has been a force for bringing about great increases in business and industrial productivity. Almost every week seems to bring computer industry advances which promise even further increases in productivity. These advances offer to drive down business and industry costs and increase efficiency, as well as increasing productivity. In addition, the cost of “computer power” continues to drop as a result of rapid advances in computer related technologies.
Despite all of these advantages, there still remains great resistance in all industries and business fields to new computer systems and significant system upgrades which offer much in productivity increases. This resistance results from past experience that equates installing new computer systems or significant upgrades in existing systems with large amounts of down time, during which the business, manufacturing facility or individual worker functions are inoperative or operate at diminished levels. This is particularly the case when a new computer operating system or significant operating system upgrade is being considered. When a business or production facility is trying to decide whether to install a new computer operating system the concern about down time, the possible loss of business, as well as stress on the workers involved very often outweighs the cost of the installation in influencing the decision. The concern about business and production delays resulting from installation has become so great that fewer small businesses are trying to make system and program changes on their own. However, even with professional installation, business inconvenience and delays may be quite substantial when new or significantly upgraded operating systems are being installed.
The designers of new or significantly upgraded operating systems for computers try, and to great extent succeed in, anticipating all possible configurations. However, even these astute groups cannot be “all things for all people”. There are bound to be computer operation configurations which cause problems for the new operating system which are time consuming to address. A great many business computer operations cannot tolerate such down time. Consequently, the operating system installation art is constantly seeking implementations for reducing such down time.